hat he had got home, and was going back to his mother, and had a clear
and uncomplicated future ahead of him, and anyhow was a man?

"Have you got something on your mind?" asked Anna-Rose at last, when he
hadn't even heard a question she asked,--he, the polite, the interested,
the sympathetic friend of the journey across.

Mr. Twist, sitting tilted back in his chair, his hands deep in his
pockets, looked up from the macaroons he had been staring at and said,
"Yes."

"Tell us what it is," suggested Anna-Felicitas.

"You," said Mr. Twist.

"Me?"

"Both of you. You both of you go together. You're in one lump in my
mind. And on it too," finished Mr. Twist ruefully.

"That's only because," explained Anna-Felicitas, "you've got the idea
we want such a lot of taking care of. Get rid of that, and you'll feel
quite comfortable again. Why not regard us merely as pleasant friends?"

Mr. Twist looked at her in silence.

"Not as objects to be protected," continued Anna Felicitas, "but as
co-equals. Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."

Mr. Twist continued to look at her in silence.

"We didn't come to America to be on anybody's mind," said Anna-Rose,
supporting Anna-Felicitas.

"We had a good deal of that in England," said Anna-Felicitas. "For
instance, we're quite familiar with Uncle Arthur's mind, we were on it
so heavily and so long."

"It's our fixed determination," said Anna-Rose, "now that we're starting
a new life, to get off any mind we find ourselves on _instantly_."

"We wish to carve out our own destinies," said Anna-Felicitas.

"We more than wish to," corrected Anna-Rose, "we intend to. What were we
made in God's image for if it wasn't to stand upright on our own feet?"

"Anna-Rose and I had given this a good deal of thought," said
Anna-Felicitas, "first and last, and we're prepared to be friends with
everybody, but only as co-equals and of a reasonable soul and human
flesh subsisting."

"I don't know exactly," said Mr. Twist, "what that means, but it seems
to give you a lot of satisfaction."

"It does. It's out of the Athanasian Creed, and suggests such perfect
equality. If you'll regard us as co-equals instead of as objects to be
looked after, you'll see how happy we shall all be."

"Not," said Anna-Rose, growing tender, for indeed in her heart she
loved and clung to Mr. Twist, "that we haven't very much liked all
you've done for us and the way you were so kind to us on the
boat,--w